Dead of Night
by nightwalker3
Summary: The Hardys weren't the sort of family that dismissed strange noises in the middle of the night. For all the good it did them this time. A zombie!apocalypse fic.


**Disclaimer: **The Hardy Boys and all related characters are the property of Simon and Schuster.  
><strong>Warning: <strong>Death of secondary characters. It's a zombie!Apocalypse, so there is some blood and gore.  
><strong><br>**

* * *

><p><strong>Dead of Night<strong>

The world went to hell while everyone slept.

It's a pretty dramatic thought, actually, and probably not entirely accurate. Joe figures not everyone was asleep; too many people died overnight for that. Other people, in the places where the plague started, probably didn't get a lot of sleep.

What with being eaten and all.

They'd gotten their own glimpse of things to come that night, though none of them had known it at the time, when the call came from the hospital.

* * *

><p>Joe was in that comfortable near-vegetative state that comes from playing video games for several hours straight. He figured another hour or two would put him comfortably in gamer Nirvana, where he could blank out the rest of the world and play solely on instinct.<p>

A voice, right beside his ear. "I can't believe Dad even let you buy that game. It's a brain-rotting program meant to instill disrespect for law and order and encourages people to violence."

Well, unless some annoying older brother came along to knock his concentration.

Joe rolled his eyes as his car crashed and burned, and turned to glare at Frank. His brother was leaning over the back of the couch, giving Joe and the game equally disparaging looks. Only the nearly hidden half smirk indicated that he was yanking Joe's chain.

Joe had plenty of experience with Frank yanking his chain. He knew the signs. "What can I say?" he drawled, deliberately slurring his vowels. "I love the glorious life of crime and murder."

Frank snorted. "Right. Gimme your keys."

"What? No."

"Every single time you play Grand Theft Auto, you drive like a maniac. Last time we got caught behind that station wagon and you threatened to ram them."

"I did not," Joe shot back. "I just wondered if they'd move a little faster if I did." He smothered a grin.

Frank shook his head. "You're still not driving the van tomorrow."

"You gonna stop me?" Joe challenged.

"I don't have to," Frank said cheerfully. "I just have to be first one out the door tomorrow morning. Shouldn't be hard, considering my opposition is King of the Snooze Button."

Okay, Frank had him there. Joe made a mental note to set his alarm several hours early.

The sound of the phone ringing upstairs distracted Frank and Joe took the opportunity to restart his game. He kept half an ear on Frank out of habit as he played, tracking his brother's footsteps up the stairs and into the kitchen to grab the phone. He didn't hear any of the conversation over the sound of the game, but he heard it clearly enough when Frank called his name in a sharp voice that, on a case, meant they needed to move fast.

Off a case, it usually meant the same thing, and Joe sometimes thought he was hard-wired to respond to that tone of voice. He'd hit pause on the game and was taking the steps two and three at a time almost as soon as he heard the call and he jumped the last couple of steps into the kitchen. "What is it?" he asked.

"Mom's in the hospital," Frank said, his voice tense as he grabbed his coat out of the hall closet and palmed the keys to the van.

Joe tensed at the announcement but Frank's voice wasn't frantic, just worried, so he let himself relax. "What happened?" He could think of a dozen possibilities off the top of his head, starting at a car accident and working the way up the ladder to assassination by one of their father's enemies. "She's okay?"

"She's fine," Frank told him, answering the more pressing question first. "The nurse who called said it looked like a random thing – some guy at the bank went nuts in line and attacked one of the other customers. Mom and a couple of other people tried to pull him off the guy and he bit her arm."

"Go, Mom," Joe cheered, shrugging into his own coat. "So she's all right?"

"Upset. Apparently the crazy guy really tore the other customer up before they restrained him, but otherwise, she's okay. But they took her to the hospital in an ambulance so I need to go drive her back to her car."

"I'll come with," Joe said automatically.

* * *

><p>Laura was fine when they got there. She was sitting in the waiting room talking to a police officer Joe vaguely recognized, giving an account of the attack. She stood when she saw them come in and when she reached up to hug Frank, the sleeve of her blouse pulled up just enough to reveal the edge a clean white bandage.<p>

"The doctors don't think the man is going to recover," Laura said. She was still a little pale. "The man who attacked him – they think he has rabies."

"Rabies?" Joe grimaced. "Like, stick-you-full-of-needles rabies?"

"How bad is it?" Frank asked.

Laura held up her right arm and pushed the sleeve of her blouse back to show the white gauze bandage wrapped just above the wrist. "Nothing serious," she said. "Though it stings a bit. The fact that I never got to run any of my errands is going to inconvenience me more than this will."

"Joe and I can help you with that," Frank offered, ignoring the face Joe made at him over their mother's shoulder. "We'll take you back to the car and then we can get a couple of them run tonight before everything closes." He offered his mother a hand and pulled her to her feet, while shooting Joe a smug grin. "Of course, I'd hate to keep Joe from his video games."

"Traitor," Joe said.

* * *

><p>Frank didn't even know what it was that woke him, but it got his heart pounding and his pulse racing. He was already sitting up in bed, his knees drawn up to his chest like he was going to lunge from the bed, his chest gasping in breath. A nightmare, maybe?<p>

Someone moved out in the hall and he froze, listening.

He didn't recognize the sound. Joe could stumble around like a drunk when he was awakened in the middle of the night, for all that he had a knack for moving silently in the field. Their mother and father had a private bathroom and wouldn't be likely to be walking around this side of the house at – he glanced at his alarm clock – at four-eighteen in the morning. Aunt Gertrude's room was downstairs.

He heard the sound again and he couldn't place it. Not a footstep, he didn't think. Something almost too quiet to be heard and he couldn't hear it over the sound of his own heartbeat slowly evening out in his chest.

Probably Joe, but the Hardys weren't the sort of family that dismissed strange sounds as _'just the cat´_. Their father's line of work and their own investigations had left them too many enemies to take that kind of chance.

He slipped out of bed, wishing briefly that he'd worn something a little more substantial to bed than a t-shirt and boxer shorts. It was early spring and the nights still had a bite to them. Plus, struggling with armed intruders in your underwear was never fun. He crossed the distance to the door silently, listening briefly at the door. Whoever he was hearing was further down the hall; he could hear a strange sort of sound now, like little gasps maybe, or –

Maybe Joe was sick or something. Frank made a mental note to watch where he put his feet, just in case.

He opened the door and stepped into the hall way, glancing down the length. He saw something about halfway between his brother's room and his parents', but in the near-total darkness of the hall, it took him a long second to recognize his mother crouched over his father's still form.

"Mom?" he called, already moving toward her, a dozen scenarios running through his head. A heart attack, or poison or someone had broken in and attacked them – no he'd have heard a fight and wouldn't his mother have called out for help if his father had collapsed? "Mom, what's wrong?"

Laura Hardy stood up abruptly and something made Frank stop; the way she moved, bizarrely fast, or the way she stood there watching him in silence. He made himself take a step forward, not sure what had spooked him, but trying to chalk it up to adrenaline and the early hour. "Mom?"

The gauze on her arm was stark white and ghostly in the hall, marking where she'd been bitten earlier that afternoon. She moved a little and the white patch moved with her.

And then either his eyes were finally adjusted or she had moved just that little bit closer but he saw his father's body lying on the floor, spasming slightly, drenched in black – it would be red in the light, blood spreading out through the carpet and Laura's feet made little squelching sounds as she walked through it.

"Mom," he said again because he didn't know what else to say.

Her hands and chest were smeared with blood, the hem of her nightgown soaked in it. Her mouth was open wide and he could see the stains around her lips and obscuring the white of her teeth. _CPR_, the last rational part of his mind said, _she was giving him CPR_.

He heard Joe open his bedroom door, and instinct moved faster than logic. "_Joe, get back!"_

Laura screamed and it wasn't a human sound anymore.

She lunged at him and Frank moved on instinct, blocked her hands only to find himself pushed back as she snarled and screamed in his face. She was trying to bite him, her teeth and lips stained with blood, her breath foul with the smell of copper and meat. Frank had her by the hands, but she was fighting like she was crazed. He chanted an apology under his breath and knocked her feet out from under her, throwing her away from him as he dodged back.

"Frank – what the _hell_-"

"Get back!" Frank said over his shoulder as he slowly backed away. "Call 911!"

Laura screeched and clawed at the carpet, dragging herself toward Frank like she'd forgotten how to stand. Little smears of blood trailed behind her as she followed her oldest son. Behind her Fenton Hardy's body was still.

"Dad?" Frank called. "Dad? Can you hear me?"

Laura moaned low and deep in her throat and snapped her teeth at Frank's ankle.

"Boys!" Their aunt's voice sounded from below, sharp with concern. "Frank? Laura? What's going on up there? Is anything wrong?"

Laura froze at the sound of Gertrude's voice, then scrabbled to her feet. Frank lunged for her, a sick vision of what might happen already forming in his mind. "Aunt Gertrude get out of here! Lock your door!" He grabbed Laura from behind as she ran toward the stairs, wrapped an arm around her throat in a chokehold and tried to keep her from doing too much damage without hurting her. Laura snarled and reached back, her hands clenched into claws that she used to rake at Frank's face.

His brother appeared at his side, eyes wide and face pale in the dark, his hands grabbing Laura's wrists before she could do any harm. "What's wrong with her?" he demanded. Frank could see the muscles in Joe's arm strain against the force of their mother's struggles.

"I don't know, I – Dad!" Frank watched as their father staggered to his feet, leaning heavily against the banister for balance. "Dad, are you all right?"

Fenton staggered as he took a couple steps toward them and made a low keening sound.

"Tell me you called 911," Frank said.

"Line was busy," Joe replied, staring at their father.

They both heard footsteps on the stairs at the same moment Fenton did. "Boys!" Their Aunt Gertrude appeared at the top of the stairs, halfway between them and her brother. "What on earth is going on?"

"Get out of here," Frank said while Laura screeched and struggled. "Aunt Gertrude, go, fast."

"I will no- Fenton!" She covered her mouth with one hand as she saw her brother staggering toward her. "Oh! Boys, call an ambulance right away!"

Frank doesn't know what would have happened next – he was about to yell out to her again, tell her to run, and maybe she'd have listened this time. But Fenton made a sound, a snarl low and deep in the back of his throat, and lunged toward her. Her startled shout turned into a scream as he clawed at her and sent them both crashing down the stairs.

"Get the attic door open!" Frank snapped and he tightened his grip as Joe vanished. Laura's fingers clawed at his hair and face but the angle was wrong and she didn't manage to anything worse than smear him with blood.

Gertrude was screaming downstairs. Frank shoved Laura forward, pushed her through the door into the attic stairway and Joe shoved the door shut before she could try to get out. The attic locked from the outside, a little slide lock at eye height that had been meant to keep two curious boys from exploring without permission. Frank slid it home and hoped it would hold. Laura wasn't trying to open the door, but she was pounding on it and throwing herself against it as if she could knock it down.

Joe was already scrambling for the stairs where Gertrude's screams had become weak and gasping.

Frank was only a few seconds behind his brother, but Gertrude was dead by the time he made it downstairs – their father was unmoving, and the lamp Joe had used to hit him was shattered into a thousand pieces. He rubbed his brother's back as Joe gagged and heaved and was sick all over the living room floor. "_Eating_," Joe said.

It was brighter down here, light from the street coming in through the big plate-glass windows. Frank had seen the body, had seen the gore dripping down his father's chin.

"I know," Frank said, even though he didn't, and "It's all right," even though it probably wasn't.

Behind them, Gertrude sat up.


End file.
